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California Is Facing More Woes in Prisons

The California Institute for Men in Chino in 2010. California has been ordered by the federal courts to release nearly 10,000 inmates and move 2,600 others.Credit
Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

LOS ANGELES — Just six months after declaring “the prison crisis is over in California,” Gov. Jerry Brown is facing dire predictions about the future of the state’s prison system, one of the largest in the nation.

A widespread inmate hunger strike in protest of California’s policy of solitary confinement was approaching its second week on Sunday. The federal courts have demanded the release of nearly 10,000 inmates and the transfer of 2,600 others who are at risk of contracting a deadly disease in the state’s overcrowded prisons.

State lawmakers have called for an investigation into a new report that nearly 150 women behind bars were coerced into being sterilized over the last decade. And last week, a federal judge ruled that prisoners were not receiving adequate medical care.

“It is like a tinderbox, and all you had to do is light a match,” said Jules Lobel, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights and the lead lawyer in a federal lawsuit over solitary confinement. “They see the state has shown no willingness to change, even when the high court orders it. They have decided to circle the wagons and keep the system that exists today as intact as possible.”

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Gov. Jerry BrownCredit
Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press

In many ways, California prison system officials have been among the most reluctant to adopt systemic changes, experts say, doing so only when forced by the federal courts. Even then, lawyers and advocates for prisoners say, the changes have come slowly and unevenly.

Mr. Brown, a Democrat, has aggressively fought several federal court orders in the two years since the United States Supreme Court ruled that conditions and overcrowding in the system amounted to a violation of the Eighth Amendment — cruel and unusual punishment. Since then, federal judges overseeing the case have repeatedly declared that the state was not making changes quickly enough, and that conditions in the prisons remained appalling — that the state had been “deliberately indifferent.”

The judges have twice threatened to hold the governor in contempt if he does not comply with their order to release prisoners. Last week, Mr. Brown appealed to the Supreme Court to stop the order, arguing that the system had already improved drastically and that stopping the release of prisoners was essential for public safety.

Though the current hunger strike is focused on the state’s solitary-confinement policy, which allows inmates with gang associations to be held in isolation cells for decades, advocates and lawyers for the prisoners say that the widespread participation is a clear sign that the inmates are increasingly infuriated by the conditions. Roughly 12,000 inmates went without state-issued meals for four consecutive days, down from 30,000 on the first day but more than double the number who took part in a similar strike two years ago.

Last month, a federal court order demanded that the state move from the Central Valley 2,600 inmates at risk of contracting coccidioidomycosis, or valley fever — a potentially lethal disease. The state had resisted the move, saying it could cause race riots in the prisons. California is also facing a separate federal lawsuit charging that it segregates prisoners by race.

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A gang member at the supermaximum Pelican Bay State Prison in Crescent City.Credit
Jim Wilson/The New York Times

State legislators called for an investigation last week after a news report that prison officials had pressured dozens of women to be sterilized in the last decade. And on Thursday, a federal judge ruled that the state was not providing adequate medical care for inmates — including basics like access to clean water.

Jeffrey Beard, the state corrections commissioner, said that the hunger strike was simply a sign of how powerful the prison gangs are and dismissed the notion that it indicated deeper problems.

“This isn’t something that came from a bunch of other people. It is guided by a few gang leaders who have enormous control,” Mr. Beard said. “It’s an opportunity inmates will often take to raise concerns they have. I don’t think that’s unusual, and I don’t think that it is part of a bigger issue.”

Mr. Beard and Governor Brown have repeatedly argued publicly that medical and mental health care in state prisons have greatly improved. They have also maintained that California is being held to an unfair standard on overcrowding because many prisons around the country double-bunk inmates.

They have made those arguments in court, bringing in expert witnesses who have testified that the state is providing care deemed proper under the United States Constitution.

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A concrete exercise yard at Pelican Bay.Credit
Jim Wilson/The New York Times

But the federal courts have found the arguments unconvincing. In a ruling on Thursday calling for an investigation of prison-based mental health facilities, a federal judge cited the “denial of basic necessities, including clean underwear,” along with doctor shortages and treatment delays. And in a footnote, the judge, Lawrence K. Karlton, chided the state for arguing for an end to federal oversight.

“Given the gravity of the evidence in this hearing,” Judge Karlton wrote in the footnote, a motion to terminate the case “takes on the character of a condition in which the defendants have simply divorced themselves from reality.”

Michael Bien, a lead lawyer representing inmates in the lawsuit over mental health care that led to the Supreme Court case, pointed to recent pictures he has placed in evidence showing prisoners sleeping on floors and in crowded dormitories, similar to the conditions the Supreme Court criticized.

In one picture taken earlier this year, prisoners are shown locked in a series of single holding cells for group therapy.

At the California Institute for Men, in San Bernardino County, several prisoners were labeled LOBs — for “lack of beds” — because there was no place to properly house them, Mr. Bien said. While waiting to be processed, they spent months in cells meant for solitary confinement.

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Inmates have been ordered moved from Avenal State Prison because of the threat of valley fever.Credit
Monica Almeida/The New York Times

“These are mentally ill patients who were literally going crazy,” Mr. Bien said. “It’s a Kafkaesque situation, where they didn’t know why they were there or when they were going to get out.”

Mr. Beard, who once testified as an expert witness against the state, said that since taking over the system late last year, he has continued to see changes in the way the prisons are run.

“I don’t know what the courts are thinking, but I have personally seen the change,” he said in an interview. “Of course I am going to run a constitutional system. I believe we can provide that at the current levels we have, and that we have both the manpower and resources to do so. There are always things we can do better, but we’ve made huge strides.”

Mr. Beard also said that the state was in the process of making changes to the way it runs the solitary-confinement program, but that those changes could be delayed by the hunger strike. Mr. Lobel called that claim disingenuous.

James W. Marquart, a former Texas prison official who has testified for California in the court cases, said that when Texas faced similar federal lawsuits, it “made the changes and got on with it.”

“Everyone believes that California is the leader, but decades ago Texas just said, ‘To heck with it, we have to do what the court says,’ ” Dr. Marquart said. “It’s layer upon layer of problems that you either have to deal with or you are going to get bled dry on the legal fees to fight it to the death.”

A version of this article appears in print on July 15, 2013, on page A7 of the New York edition with the headline: California Is Facing More Woes In Prisons. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe